Pawns And Knights
by Sierra Janeway
Summary: Horatio and his team investigate the daytime kidnapping of a young boy and the brutal attack on his teenage babysitter who tried to protect him.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters and stuff belong to whoever owns CSI

Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot.

Author's Note: This is my first CSI: Miami fan fic. The idea came to me out of nowhere and kept pestering me until I started typing. This is probably the fastest I've ever typed a chapter for anything. Somehow everything just came together, even with the research I had to do. I hope I've managed to do the show justice!

Reviews are always greatly appreciated. They make the writing even more enjoyable. Let me know what you like/don't like/ want to see in the future.

Enjoy!

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

* * *

**Pawns and Knights**

Laser beams of red and yellow shot across the room with a whizzing crackle and connected with the target, a man dressed like a soldier with space-age weapons. The man exploded into hundreds of pieces as a few notes of a funeral chant sounded and half of a screen went dark. 'PLAYER 2 VANQUISHED' the screen read in dark blue letters. Fourteen-year-old Abbie Bennett groaned in disappointment and frustration. "Come on, Michael," she pleaded with the seven-year-old boy sitting next to her. "You know I'm not very good at this."

Michael Dawson just laughed and grinned with the pride of beating his much-older babysitter. "Hey, I'm teaching you!"

"Not very well, or I would have seen you coming into the control room."

"Wanna try it again?" The boy held his controller up as a challenge and smiled slyly.

"Of course! I'm going to figure this out sooner or later, and then you're going _down_!"

The boy laughed and restarted the game and soon the two of them were furiously dodging laser fire from the other's character. Abbie found it easier to navigate and remembered more of what each controller button did this eighth time around, but she still struggled and quickly was on the losing end again. She bit her lip and tucked a lock of errant hair back into place under her headband, concentrating hard on her half of the eighty-inch TV screen. "Come on! Run! Run!" she yelled at her character.

Laser fire was still loudly raining down around the soldier on the screen when she heard the doorbell ring. "Pause it a second, Michael," Abbie instructed as she started to get up.

"I don't think so," he giggled.

"Come on, Michael." The doorbell rang again insistently.

"Uh uh. You forfeit!"

Abbie rolled her eyes. "You're gonna have to restart it when I lose. _Again_."

The person at the door was getting impatient. The bell was practically shrieking.

She sighed loudly and headed for the door. "Michael Dawson, you are absolutely impossible."

He laughed.

Leaving the game room, she quickly made her way through the living room and the kitchen and into the entryway. The bell was still frantically ringing. A man's silhouette could be seen through the decorative frosted glass window. Cautiously, Abbie opened the door a crack. "May I help you?"

Pain exploded through her forehead as the man shoved the door open and it connected with her head with a loud crack. She stumbled backwards and before she could react he grabbed her hair and jerked her around. He clamped a sweet-smelling rag over her nose and mouth, hard.

Panicked, Abbie held her breath, knowing what the rag was probably soaked in, and struggled against her captor, trying to land a blow with her elbows. The man held on tightly and tried to press her arms to her sides, but she fought wildly and managed to dig her right elbow into his side. The sudden pain made him loosen his grip on her, which allowed her to get her other arm free. She twisted in his grip and raked her nails across his face with every ounce of strength she could muster. His hands and the rag dropped away from her and she tried to run, but his fist came out of nowhere and smashed into the side of her face, very near her left eye. She hit the ground hard and felt the wind knocked out of her. The man grabbed the rag off the floor and reached over to press it over her face again.

Her eye and her head felt like they was going to explode, but Abbie managed to kick out through the blinding pain. Her foot smashed into his stomach and he reeled back, clutching his stomach and struggling to breathe. She pushed herself up as best she could and fought to pull air into her own lungs. Panting, she managed to scream two words: "Michael! RUN!"

The man looked up with an evil gleam in his eyes. Staring at Abbie, who was now unsteadily on her feet, he pulled a knife out of his waistband and raised it high.

Abbie froze for a second, eyes wide and focused on the knife. Then, recklessly, she charged at the man.

She grabbed at his arm desperately and tried to twist the weapon free from his hand. In a flash, he had the knife in his other hand. She screamed as her assailant sunk the knife into her shoulder, but she didn't go down. Even as she felt blood gush from the wound and soak her T-shirt, she tried again to disarm him. This time she grabbed at both of his arms. He slashed at her, slicing open her hands, wrists, arms, and neck, but she only fought harder. They struggled for what felt like an eternity. Ignoring her bleeding wounds, she made one last swipe for the knife and somehow managed to knock it out of his hands. It hit the ground and skittered away.

Her focus had been on the knife, and she was too late to duck from the board he swung at her head. Everything went dark and she fell to the ground.

Fighting to stay conscious, she heard a second set of footsteps inside the house. Someone kicked her leg and voices murmured. That was the last thing she was aware of before a heavy darkness settled over her.

* * *

Abbie let out a low moan and tried to move. She was in the most terrible pain of her life and couldn't remember why. Managing to open her right eye, she recognized the entryway of the Dawson home and everything came rushing back.

_The doorbell. The man. The knife._

She struggled to sit up, hardly suppressing a scream. Her shoulder burned, her palms were on fire, her arms stung, and her head throbbed. The room spun, but she forced herself up onto her feet. Fear bubbled up in her throat and she clung to the doorway for support. She was panicking inside, but she couldn't make herself hurry. Her body wouldn't cooperate. Forced to lean on the walls, she made her way back through the kitchen.

"Michael?"

The terrible silence in the house was suffocating her. All she could hear was her own labored breathing.

"Michael?"

She fearfully entered the living room. The TV's giant screen glowed blue, casting a soft light over the abandoned controllers on the ground. For a split second, she wondered why the game had stopped.

And then she saw the rest of the room.

The end table where the game system had been was lying on its side. The game system was on the other side of the room. Remote controls, picture frames, magazines, games, and other knickknacks were scattered everywhere.

Shocked, she stumbled backwards into the wall. She stared at one mess and then another, until something made her breath catch in her throat: a red stain on the white carpet. She screamed.

"MICHAEL!!"

* * *

Horatio Caine directed his silver Hummer into the driveway of a lavish beachfront home and shut off the motor. He slid on his sunglasses and stepped out of the vehicle, forcefully shutting the door behind him. He was all business.

"What do we have Frank?" he asked the officer as he strode towards the house.

"Kidnapping. Seven-year-old Michael Dawson. Marched into the house and took him in broad daylight."

"Ransom note?"

"Nope. Nothin'. We're still trying to get ahold of the parents."

Horatio stopped just before the crime scene tape that had been set up around the house and the surrounding sidewalk. "Who called it in?"

"Babysitter." Frank gestured towards the beach fifty feet or so away where a girl was slowly walking back and forth, a bath towel draped over her shoulders. "Name's Abbie Bennett. That's all anyone's gotten out of her since the 911 call."

"Frank…" Horatio said slowly, taking in the girl's strange behavior and the fact that one side of her face was darker than the other. "Frank, she looks injured."

Frank's voice lowered. "We're guessing the kidnapper attacked her when he went after Michael."

"Guessing, Frank?" He turned to face the detective.

"When she made the 911 call, all she said was that a boy had been kidnapped. Dispatcher thought she sounded a little odd, so he sent paramedics out here as well." He sighed. "She's refusing treatment, won't even let anyone near her so we don't know how bad she is."

"Ok," Horatio nodded. "Ok."

He set out across the sand.

A short walk brought him within a few feet of Abbie Bennett, who continued pacing and didn't seem aware of him. She was young, probably a high school freshmen, with shoulder-length wavy chestnut hair. Her deep blue eyes were troubled and seemed to be staring far away, fixed on something or someone no one else could see. One of her eyes was slightly swollen and colored a deep blue-purple, as was the surrounding area. She was wearing khaki capris and a blue and white horizontally striped shirt. If she had been wearing shoes, they were gone now. Her bare feet scuffed the sand as she walked.

"Abbie?" Horatio gently asked.

Abbie heard a deep, calm, masculine voice break through her bubble of silence. She turned and saw a middle-aged man with red hair that glinted in the sun. He wore a blue dress shirt, black dress pants, and a black suit jacket, even in the heat of the Miami sun. He had one hand casually on his hip, letting her see a gun and a badge clipped to his belt. He was looking at her intently from behind a pair of sunglasses.

Still observing the girl, who was now looking back at him, he let his hand drop from his hip, and he slid his sunglasses off. Holding them between the index and middle finger of his right hand, he gently asked again. "Abbie?"

The girl licked her lips. "Yeah?" she whispered, her voice cracking.

"Abbie, I'm Lieutenant Horatio Caine."

"You're a cop."

"Yes, and…" He slowly moved closer, wanting to keep her at ease. "I'm also a crime scene investigator."

Her eyes watered. "You're gonna find Michael?"

"Yes, I am," he assured her.

She looked at him a second longer before tears started rolling down her cheeks and she looked away. Her face was taut with anxiety.

He could guess what she was thinking. "This is not your fault, Abbie."

"Mrs. Dawson's going to kill me," she said in a choked voice. "No one will ever want me to babysit for them ever again. How could I have let him be taken like that?

"Abbie, this is not your fault," he repeated in his slow, gentle voice. He locked eyes with her.

Under his intense gaze, her reserve crumbled and she let out a deep shaky breath.

Horatio came a few steps closer until he stood directly in front of her. He could see blood drops on the towel around her shoulders. "The man who took Michael. Did he hurt you?"

"Just find Michael, please," she begged.

"Right now, sweetheart, I'm more worried about you." Crouching slightly so he was on eye level with her, he explained, "You're our only witness. You can help us find the man who took Michael, but I want you to let the paramedics take care of your injuries first, ok?"

She looked at him for a moment before she responded. "That…that…man…I…scratched him, when he attacked me. Does that help?"

He stood up and reached into his pocket. "Absolutely." He pulled out a small envelope and a metal tool. "I'll scrape out from under your fingernails, and then we'll go over to the ambulance."

She nodded and held out her hands.

Horatio gently scraped under each fingernail. Small particles of skin dropped into the envelope. When he'd finished, he turned her hands over before she could protest.

Her palms had been sliced open multiple times. More lacerations covered her wrists, inner arms, and neck. When she didn't react to him observing her wounds, he looked up. She was staring off in the opposite direction, a strange look on her face.

"Abbie? What's wrong?"

"I feel dizzy…."

He looked more closely at her eyes. One pupil was larger than the other. He shaded one hand over her face, but her pupils didn't respond to the light change.

"Ok…Abbie, you really need to see the paramedics now. Here, lean on me."

She did, and as they started walking, the towel fell away from her shoulders to reveal her blood-soaked T-shirt.

Horatio didn't react outwardly in order to keep her calm, but inside he thought, _This girl's in bad shape. _"That's it, nice and slow. We're almost there."

Several paramedics came hurrying over when they drew near and swept Abbie away into the back of an ambulance, where they began cutting away her bloody shirt. "She may have a serious concussion," Horatio told them. "Her pupils are unevenly dilated and unresponsive to light change."

One of them checked and nodded to his companions. "We're taking her to the hospital," he responded.

Abbie cried out as Horatio stepped back and they started to close the ambulance doors.

"We'll find him," he called out to the terrified girl. "I promise."

As the ambulance sped away with flashing lights and wailing siren, he repeated quietly to himself, "I promise."

"Was that the babysitter?" came the voice of a southern woman from behind him.

He turned and saw Calleigh, evidence kit in hand and blond hair tossed by the wind, patiently waiting with Eric and Speed.

He nodded. "Yes it was. Looks like we have another set of parents to track down."

Calleigh sighed. "One missing little boy an' one beaten young girl. Not exactly how a Saturday morning's supposed to go." She tucked a long blond lock of hair behind her ear. "What do we have, Horatio?"

"We have a crime scene and two victims, so…" Horatio replied, sliding his sunglasses on. "Let's get ourselves a suspect."

* * *

Author's Note: Well, what do you think? I watched the entire first season before I wrote this to make things as accurate as possible, so I hope that paid off. :) If you can, please review. Feedback is greatly helpful and appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Pawns and Knights

Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot.

Author's Note: Thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews! I really enjoyed reading all the feedback and comments.

Now, I know I haven't updated in, err, quite a while…(sheepish grin)…but being a high school senior is absolutely crazy, especially when you're in a play on top of all the graduation stuff you have to do!

Speaking of which, this story should be updated much more often from now on, since I've been given permission to use it as my senior project!! YAY!! (Of course, ideally, this project should have been done months ago, but, hey, at least I'm working on it!)

As always, I love reviews.

Ok, I'll stop now and let you read. Here it is: chapter two.

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

**Pawns and Knights**

"Ok, here's how we're going to do this," Horatio informed his team as they gathered near the house. "Calleigh and I are going to process the interior of the house. Eric and Speed, you two process the perimeter. Photograph _everything_. He took the boy in broad daylight with neighbors across the street and next door, so either he's good or he's reckless. If he's reckless, then he left us with exactly what we need to track him down." Picking up his silver evidence kit, he added, "Most murders happen within the first twenty-four hours of a kidnapping. This is the only crime scene in Miami today."

"You got it, H," Eric replied solemnly. Tim Speedle nodded in agreement, and the two of them moved off, cameras in hand.

Horatio and Calleigh each pulled on a pair of latex gloves and carefully began to examine the part of the porch by the front door.

Calleigh snapped off a series of photographs documenting the general area. "Might be able to get some prints off the handle," she commented, eyeing the smooth round metal surface.

Her supervisor nodded, lost in thought.

"Horatio?"

"Look at this welcome mat," he said, crouching down and gesturing at the brown woven surface. "I see at least three different types of soil, plus sand."

"You thinking the kidnapper transferred some of it?"

"Could be. Let's bag this and get the whole thing back to the lab, ok?" He stood back up and took another look at the door. It was a heavy wooden door painted red with an oval-shaped frosted glass window. It stood slightly ajar. Horatio lifted his camera and took a few shots of the door before he carefully pushed it open and stepped over the threshold.

He found himself standing in an affluent entryway with a highly polished wooden floor and bright white walls. A large, ornate circular mirror hung on the wall to his left, with a small mahogany table pushed against the wall beneath it and a matching mahogany bench on the far side of the table. A row of brass-colored hooks was fastened to the wall on his right, holding a baseball hat and a couple of jackets. Three paintings, one of a seagull, one of a sunset over the ocean, and one of a lighthouse, hung on the wall near the hooks.

The view was spoiled by the blood pool on the floor and the spatters of blood on the walls. A blue and white headband lay abandoned on the floor. Horatio crouched down and placed yellow evidence markers on the floor near the pool, a smeared bloody handprint, a series of blood droplets, and the headband. Raising his camera, he photographed all of it. He let his eyes drift slowly over the scene. With a sad smile, he picked up the headband and turned it over in his hands.

Soft footsteps behind him announced the presence of his fellow CSI.

"Oh my," came Calleigh's soft southern voice. "Is all this from the babysitter?"

"I think so," Horatio replied as he bagged the headband and then pulled a swab out of his evidence kit and delicately swabbed the edge of the blood pool. "She, uh…she looked pretty bad." He slid the swab back into its box and scribbled his name, the date, and the type of evidence on the side.

"You ok, Horatio?"

"Yeah, fine." He paused. "It's just that I hate to think of what could be happening to that little boy. If the assailant could do this to a teenage girl with the strength to fight back…" He didn't finish his sentence. Both of them knew what he was thinking. "I'll get samples from the rest of this and see if any of the blood isn't hers."

She nodded. "A knife attack is messy. The knife usually slips and cuts the attacker. There's a pretty good chance he left some of his own blood behind."

"Exactly. And if we can find any, it should get us closer to young Michael." A gleam from under the mahogany bench caught his eye and he moved closer to investigate. "What do we have here?"

Calleigh craned her neck to get a better look. A medium-sized bloodstained knife was partially hidden behind one of the bench's legs. "And there's the knife," she said in surprise. Horatio slid a marker next to it and she took a few pictures.

Once it was properly documented, he very carefully picked it up and held it where they could both inspect it.

"Looks like a camping knife," Calleigh frowned as she peered closely at the folding handle. "Nasty-looking serrated blade. Winchester brand. You can buy one at any Wal-Mart. Not exactly a smoking gun."

"That depends. If we can match it to a suspect or get some prints, it may become just that."

She slipped it cautiously into a plastic evidence bag. "Do we have everything from out here?"

Horatio nodded and moved towards the doorway that separated the porch from the rest of the house. His camera flashed in unison with Calleigh's, but they found nothing significant until they stepped through.

The kitchen walls were painted a soft cream color and the one to their immediate right very vividly showed the large smears of blood leading from one end of the room to the other. A few bloody handprints stained the wall adjacent to the smears.

They simply stared for a minute, then looked at each other as if to say, _What __**happened**__ here?_ Wordlessly, they followed the trail, careful to avoid any of the small droplets scattered along the floor near the wall. It led them out of the kitchen and into a spacious, affluent living room with a large red brick fireplace, thick tan carpeting, a large flat-screen television, several elegant-looking plants in terra cotta pots, a full mahogany bookcase, a number of expensive paintings in stylish frames, and a matching couch, love seat, and chair upholstered in navy-blue suede. The walls here were also painted white and now were smeared with blood.

The trail ended in the next room, which appeared to be a game room of sorts. Its walls were painted a soft blue and the floor was covered in white carpet. A huge TV hanging on the far wall cast a vivid blue light over its surroundings. Two game controllers lay abandoned on the floor near the TV. The central game system was on the other side of room. Magazines, remotes, pictures in frames, and other various knickknacks were scattered throughout the entire room. A coffee table lay on its side, its glass top fractured in several areas and some tiny pieces of glass sprinkled over the carpet like glittering diamonds. A small pool of blood stained the carpet between the far wall and the overturned coffee table.

"It must have been one heck of a fight," Calleigh said, taking it all in.

Horatio nodded. "Any theories?"

She took another look around the room. Her eyes came to rest on the walls. "She was in here with the boy. Man came in to take the boy, girl tried to fight him off. The man dragged the boy outside, and the babysitter tried to follow. Since she had been stabbed, she had to lean on the walls for support. When she got to the porch, she fell and bled for a while before she could call 911."

She observed the blood smears for a minute or so before she moved to get a closer look, frowning. "Wait a minute. The directionality of these smears seems to indicate that they were made right to left. If she had been leaving this room, they would be left to right." She glanced over at her boss.

"So maybe," Horatio continued. "She went to answer the door and was attacked right there in the entryway. She had signs of a head injury, which could mean he hit her over the head with something to knock her out. That would leave him free to take the boy. When she came to, she went to find Michael, making these smears right to left as she leaned on the walls for support." Setting his evidence kit down, he added, "But until we process everything, it's only a theory."

Calleigh pulled evidence markers out of her own kit. "I'll get started."

Horatio didn't hear her. His attention was focused on something in the far corner of the room. As he approached, he could see that it was a pair of girls' sandals, tan soles and wide straps of navy blue canvas decorated with white hibiscus flowers, along with a brightly colored shoulder bag with blue cloth handles. The bag was decorated in varying orange, pink, and blue tropical flowers and a row of rhinestones adorned the very top. Very carefully, he reached inside.

His gloved hand recognized one of the shapes and he pulled out a cream-colored vinyl wallet. Flipping it open, he was greeted by a picture of Abbie Bennett, grinning at him from the front of her school I.D. card. Shifting the wallet to his other hand, he dug into the bag once more with his free hand and fished out what he really needed: her cell phone. It was small with a silver finish and a couple of star-shaped charms hanging from the upper left corner. He flipped it open and navigated from her palm tree background to her contact list. It didn't take much scrolling to find the entry titled 'Mom & Dad'. He glanced over at Calleigh who was busily collecting samples and taking pictures before he pushed _SEND_.

It rang on the other once, twice, three times, before someone picked up.

"Hello?" asked a woman's voice.

"Is this Mrs. Bennett?"

"It is. And you are…?"

"Ma'am, this is Lieutenant Horatio Caine with Miami-Dade CSI."

There was a pause. "What's going on?"

"Ma'am, do you have a daughter named Abbie?"

"What happened?" Mrs. Bennett's voice became apprehensive.

"Ma'am…" he started to say.

"Please, Lieutenant," she interrupted. "Just tell me."

"While she was babysitting this morning, someone broke in and, uh, kidnapped the boy she was watching. He, uh….he also attacked your daughter." He paused several times, trying to get the news across as painlessly as possible.

"Is she ok? Is Michael ok? Do you know who did it? Where is she?" Fear flooded her voice and made her talk very quickly.

"We're still investigating, ma'am. I don't know what her current condition is, but they've taken her to Dade Memorial," he said calmly, hoping to ease her worry.

"Can we go see her?"

"That shouldn't be a problem. Is your husband home?"

"No, he's at work. I'll call him and let him know." She still sounded half-panicked.

"Ma'am, I don't want you to worry. My entire team is working on this. We're going to find out what happened to both Abbie and Michael."

Slightly reassured, she replied, "Thank you, Lieutenant."

"You're welcome. You hang in there, ok?"

They said their goodbyes and he closed Abbie's phone and returned it to her bag.

"Parents?" Calleigh asked as she swabbed the small pool of blood near the far wall.

"Yes. That was her mother. She's going to call Abbie's father and they're going to head over to the hospital."

"One down, one to go," she remarked.

"Yep. I'm going to see if I can find a number for Michael's parents. There should be a list of emergency numbers somewhere if they have a babysitter."

Before he could go anywhere, his own cell phone rang. He snatched it up. "Horatio."

"It's Frank. I just finished talking to the neighbors."

Horatio frowned and looked at his watch. "Already? Frank, there are approximately eight other houses on each side of this street."

"Yeah," he drawled in his Texas accent. "But it's real easy to do all of 'em when no one's home."

"No one? On a Saturday?"

"Only person around was this one lady across the street and down three houses. She works Saturdays same as Michael's mom and she'd come back from her office to grab an important file she forgot. She said it's just Michael and his mom that live there. She's never seen anyone else family-like hanging around. Says they're pretty friendly and made up for their lack of family with their number of close friends."

"Ok…was she here all morning? Did she see anything?"

"Matter of fact, she did. She was pulling into her driveway and nearly got clipped by an old Suburban racing away."

"Did she get a good look at it?"

"Yeah, especially since it was so out of place for the neighborhood. Light blue, real old-lookin', tinted windows, rusty undercarriage and bumpers, license plate ends in 2IA."

"Ok. Frank, call in an Amber Alert. I'm going to contact the boy's mother. Call me if you find out anything else."

"Will do."

Horatio snapped his phone shut and strode purposefully into the kitchen. In his experience, nine out of ten people kept emergency numbers somewhere in their kitchen, often in a drawer with the local phone book. As it turned out, he didn't even have to go searching through drawers to find it. A magnetic dry-erase board clung to the front of the Dawson's stainless steel refrigerator. It listed all the numbers a babysitter might need—fire department, police, pediatrician, dentist, and, most importantly, mom's number at work. He dialed the number into his phone and waited.

The other end of the line rang and rang and rang. Seven, eight, nine, ten times, then it went to voice mail. He dialed the number again, hoping he had somehow misdialed it the first time, and met with the same result. Four more attempts didn't change the outcome.

He sighed before he called out to Calleigh. "The mother's phone keeps going to voice mail. I'm going to grab Tripp and see if we can track her down where she works. If you need anything, Speed and Eric are still covering the perimeter. I'll meet you back at the lab."

"See you there," she called back from the other room.

As he left the house, he called Frank and informed him of the situation. He then made another call, this time to the lab, and had them run the mother's work number through the database to get an address. Once he had the address, he met Frank at the Hummer.

"So where're we headed?" the detective asked, heading for the passenger side.

"Company headquarters of Jaora Designs at 8861 Bricken Avenue," Horatio replied as he climbed into the driver's seat and put the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life and he backed the vehicle onto the street. They left the affluence of Bayshore Drive and headed into the business district.

8861 turned out to be a ten-story building, the exterior of which was covered almost entirely with bluish-green reflective glass. It was certainly one of the smaller buildings in Miami, but it still had a certain presence. The two police officers entered the lobby and approached the service area. A bored looking college-age employee with short stringy dark hair and multiple piercings in both ears and one in her nose was manning the desk.

"Excuse me," Tripp said.

The girl sighed, as if those two words were a huge imposition on her precious time. "Yeah?"

"We're looking for the headquarters of Jaora Designs," Horatio explained.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, but—"

She sighed again. "Then I'm sorry, but I can't release that information. Company privacy policy."

"We have something better," Horatio replied. He and Tripp held up their badges.

Her eyes grew wide and she looked nervous. "Oh, ok. Um, third floor."

"Thank you," the lieutenant smiled.

"Yeah, no problem…" The girl stared after them as they entered the elevator.

The entire third floor consisted of eight computer desks, a bathroom, a makeshift photo studio, and a series of tables that went on and on, each one heaped with art supplies or various computer parts. Three women were hard at work at computers and two others were setting up a group of baskets on a green velvet backdrop to be photographed.

"Jessica Dawson?" Horatio called.

A young woman with shoulder-length brown-blond hair glanced up from one of the computers. "Yes?"

He held up his badge. "MDPD. I'm Lieutenant Horatio Caine, and this is Detective Frank Tripp."

She stood up and put her hands on her hips. Mock-sternly, she asked her colleagues, "Ok, who thought it would be funny to hide a body in my backyard?"

The other women laughed, and Horatio smiled slightly. "Well, ma'am, I am a CSI, but this isn't about a body."

Jessica Dawson made her way over to the two of them. "How can I help you?"

The two officers glanced at each other before coming to a wordless agreement.

"Well," Horatio said slowly. "Actually, we came to help you."

"Oh?"

He paused. It had been much easier with Abbie's mother—he knew exactly where Abbie was and that she was alive.

"Ms. Dawson…"

"Please. Call me Jessie."

"Jessie." He looked at the floor before he met her eyes again. "Do you have a son named Michael?"

"Yes…" She had a puzzled look on her face.

"How old is he?"

"Seven. What's going on?"

"Uh, ma'am, your son…"

Her face and voice were filled with fear. "Is Michael ok?"

He paused. "We don't know yet. He was taken from your house this morning—"

"NO!" she screamed. "No, no, not Michael!"

"Ma'am—"

She was crying now. "Who took him? Why?" Her eyes narrowed in anger. "Where was Abbie when he was taken?!"

Tripp tried to calm her. "We have officers combing every inch of the area and we've put out an Amber Alert. We're going to find him."

"And right now," Horatio added. "Miss Abbie Bennett is in Dade Memorial Hospital getting treated for wounds she sustained during a struggle with your son's kidnapper."

The anger left her face and she cried harder. "He hurt both of them?"

"We don't know for sure that he hurt Michael," the lieutenant reassured her, though the image of the small blood pool in the game room wouldn't leave him alone.

By now, Jessie's coworkers had overheard the news and gathered around her, making comforting noises and helping her to a chair. "I'll start making flyers," a woman with very short brown hair announced. "Olivia, load up the printer with a ream of that poster size paper we just got in. I'll upload some of those pictures we took at the park last week." She scurried off with a petite curly-haired brunette. Two of the other women rushed off to work on something else. The room was soon a flurry of frenzied activity.

"We're going to need some things from you," Horatio continued. "A list of recent contacts, any enemies, an article of his clothing, a toothbrush or hairbrush…"

"So you can identify his body?" she sobbed.

"No," he said firmly. "We're not going to jump to conclusions—" His ringing cell phone cut him off. "Excuse me. Frank, can you take over?" When the detective nodded, he snatched up the phone and briskly moved away from the group.

"Lieutenant Caine."

"This Dr. Elliot Hawthorne from Dade Memorial. I'm calling about the stab victim from your kidnapping case, Miss Abbie Bennett."

He paused, worried. "Doctor, is she going to make it?"

"Better than make it—she's one of the lucky ones. The knife didn't hit any major blood vessels or nerves, and the lacerations to the rest of her body were mostly superficial. Blood loss wasn't bad enough to require a transfusion. The CAT scan results show her head injury to be a mild concussion. We're keeping her for a few more hours for observation, but it's only a precaution."

"Ok…Is she up to an interview?"

"As a matter of fact, she wanted me to tell you that she wants to come to the lab tomorrow to talk with you, to tell you what happened."

Horatio nodded. "Let her know I got the message and I'll see her tomorrow, ok?"

"I'll do that."

"Thank you, doctor."

"No problem."

He shut the phone with a sharp click and strode back to where Jessie Dawson was sitting, tears still running down her face like a waterfall, talking to Tripp.

"I was just talking to a Dr. Hawthorne from Dade Memorial," he announced. At that, the two of them looked up.

"About the girl?" Frank asked.

"Yes, about the girl." He looked over at Jessie. "Abbie's going to be ok. And you know what that means?"

"What?" she asked tearfully.

"It means," Horatio replied, a determined look on his face. "That the kidnapper _isn't_ going to be ok."

Author's Note: It took me about a week to type those nine pages you just read. Yeah, I'm a lazy bum. Let me know what you thought! I look forward to hearing from you.


	3. Chapter 3

Pawns and Knights

_Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot._

Author's Note: Wow, look at all those reviews! Thank you so much for your support. I'm really glad you're all enjoying. (And the many requests for a quick update tell me you're enjoying it quite a bit!)

HA **HA!! **I've managed to post an update in slightly over a week! I think that's a new record for me!! XD

I'll be posting one new chapter a week from now on, since I have the entire story DONE!! I turned it in as my senior project and everyone who has read so far has loved it. (My one friend even had me sign a copy of it so when I'm famous he can sell it on eBay. XD)

I know things are moving along pretty quickly, but I had to do it that way: I graduate in like two weeks. And in addition, things would move pretty quickly on a kidnapping case involving a child.

I'll probably be writing one more chapter than I wrote for my project so I can fit in some Horatio/Calleigh stuff. (My choice of pairing and also I have had requests for it.) It still should be posted on time with the others, as I have a lot more free time now.

Reviews are awesome!

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

**Pawns and Knights**

Chapter Three

Tim Speedle hurried down a hallway at the Miami-Dade crime lab, looking for his supervisor. The folder he clutched held results from the multiple blood samples they had collected from the Dawson household.

"Speed!"

He looked back. Eric Delko was exiting one of the rooms he had just passed.

"Yeah?"

Eric caught up to him and they continued down the hall. "You get those blood results?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm going to see Horatio about."

"How about the samples from the knife I'm processing?"

Tim sorted through the folder and pulled out a few sheets of paper printed with DNA results. He handed them to his colleague. "Sorry man. All the samples belong to Abbie Bennett."

Eric swore loudly. "He must've worn gloves. That kept him from cutting himself."

"How do you figure?"

"The only marks I got off the handle were smudges and I found a tiny leather fragment caught between the blade and the handle."

"Tough break."

"You can say that again."

By this time, they had reached the reception area. Horatio was checking his messages at the front desk.

"H!" Tim called.

Their supervisor looked up. "What do you have, Speed?"

"DNA results from the blood samples collected from the Dawson house."

Horatio took the folder and flipped through the pages. He looked disappointed. "Everything but the blood from the game room carpet belongs to Abbie. The blood from the carpet is Michael Dawson's." He handed the folder back to Speed. "Nothing from the attacker. Eric, did you get anything from the knife?"

He shook his head. "Just our luck: the kidnapper wore gloves."

"Ok…are you thinking professional?"

"I can't say at this point. We're still processing everything."

Horatio nodded. "Double your efforts. Process as fast as you can without mistakes. The scent dogs haven't found anything, so it's up to us." He didn't mention the fact that it had been almost twenty-four hours, but it was painfully foremost in the minds of everyone involved in the case. "What about the skin from under the babysitter's fingernails?"

"No hits in CODIS."

"Do you know if Calleigh has anything yet?"

"She's still trying to sort out the soil samples from the welcome mat," Tim replied.

"Ok. Let me know when you have something."

"Will do." The two dark-haired men headed back to their respective assignments.

He stood watching them go, lost in thought, for a minute or so before the officer behind the desk broke through his reverie.

"Lieutenant Caine?"

"Yeah?" He turned to face her.

"You have a visitor." She gestured towards the atrium.

"Thank you." He made his way to the small room and peered inside. Abbie Bennett was seated on the long black leather couch, her bruised face illuminated by the light that streamed through the slanted glass wall on the opposite side of the room.

"Abbie?"

She looked up. "Lieutenant." She moved as though to get up, but the second her palms touched the couch on either side of her, she winced in pain and jerked them away. She made a hissing noise through her teeth.

Horatio signaled her to remain seated and took a seat next to her.

She smiled wistfully. "I keep forgetting how sensitive they are."

He returned the smile. "How're you doing?"

"Much better than yesterday morning, but I'm still in a lot of pain. Ibuprofen is my best friend right now." Her smile disappeared as she added, "I take it you still don't have any leads."

He bit his lip before replying apologetically, "I'm afraid we don't."

Abbie looked at the ceiling for a second, eyes watering. When she looked back at him, she had her face set resolutely. "Then I guess I'd better tell you everything I can remember."

"Before you do that, I'd like to take your fingerprints and then have you go with one of our female officers and have her photograph your wounds. Is that ok?"

The young girl frowned. "I suppose so…but why?"

"Your fingerprints will help us eliminate any prints that are supposed to be in the house. As for your injuries, when we catch this guy," he said, putting an extra emphasis on the word 'when'. "Multiple charges are going to be filed—kidnapping and assault and battery at least. We'll need visible evidence to present in court."

She nodded her assent.

"Good." He reached for his cell phone. "Let me see if I can borrow Calleigh for a few minutes."

One of the lab techs owed Calleigh a favor, so he took over on the welcome mat for a while and Calleigh showed up at the atrium, department-issue camera in hand.

"Hey there," Calleigh smiled. "I'm Calleigh Dusquesne." She held out her hand.

"I'm Abbie Bennett. I'd shake your hand, but…" She smiled and held up her palms as an explanation. Bright red slashes, just barely beginning to heal and protected with bandages and gauze, covered both hands.

Calleigh grinned back. "I understand. We're just going to go down the hall a little ways, all right?"

Abbie smiled gamely. "Lead the way."

Horatio wandered down the hall to the break room for a cup of coffee while he waited for them to return. The lab's coroner, Alexx Woods, was sitting watching the news and sipping a cup of tea.

"Hey Horatio," Alexx called out. "How's the kidnapping case coming?"

He shook his head as he stirred sugar into his steaming cup of coffee. "Nothing substantial yet. The babysitter's with Calleigh right now getting her wounds photographed. So far she's our only witness, so maybe what she saw will give us something to go on."

"Poor kid. It's all over the news you know." She picked up the remote and turned up the TV's volume.

"Seven-year-old Michael Dawson was brazenly snatched from his home yesterday morning by an unknown assailant. His babysitter, fourteen-year-old Abbie Bennett, an honor student from the local high school, was attacked with a knife as she tried to defend the young boy. She was released from Dade Memorial this morning after doctors treated her wounds and monitored her head injury. So far, police have had no breakthroughs in locating Michael. Anyone with any information at all is encouraged to step forward—"

Alexx scrolled through several channels. "—searches are being conducted throughout the neighborhood. A reward of 15,000 has been offered by the boy's mother—"

"—Michael Dawson's elementary school is holding a bake sale to raise funds to help the searchers. Abbie Bennett's high school is collecting money for her hospital bills—"

"—neighbors have set up a command post where they lit candles that will remain lit until Michael is safely home—" Pictures of an adorable little boy with short blond hair and brown eyes filled the screen.

She muted the television. "Hard to believe they haven't found anything. Has the Amber Alert turned up that car the neighbor saw?"

"No, no sign of it. Forensically, we haven't turned up much either." He started for the door with his coffee.

Alexx sighed. "You've sure got your work cut out for you. Good luck."

"Thank you Alexx," he called over his shoulder as he exited the break room.

Calleigh and Abbie were waiting for him in the atrium, chatting amicably. "Ladies."

"Horatio." Calleigh stood up. "I took the camera to the photo lab. Pictures are getting developed as we speak."

"Thank you Calleigh."

"See you later Abbie," she said as she left.

"Bye Calleigh."

"Ready?" he asked.

Abbie nodded seriously. "Yes."

He led her to one of the interview rooms and helped her get seated without aggravating her injuries. "Would you like anything to drink?" he asked as he set down his cup of coffee.

"Um, a Cherry Coke would be nice, if you have it," she said hesitantly.

He stepped into the hall for a minute and had one of the interns who was wandering around fetch a Cherry Coke from the machines down the hall.

"Thanks," she said quietly, popping the tab very methodically with her thumbnail to avoid reopening the wounds on her hands. She took a few sips.

He stirred his coffee, observing the young girl across the table from him. She looked more nervous than she was letting on.

"Abbie…"

She glanced up.

"We're going to take this slow, ok?"

She let out a shaky breath and stopped trying to pretend that she wasn't at all scared. Her pale face was a sharp contrast to the dark green sleeveless top she was wearing and made every cut and bruise stand out in vivid detail.

"Whenever you're ready."

She drummed her fingers on the tabletop for a few seconds. "Ok," she nodded.

"What were you doing right before the attack?"

Abbie bit her lip in concentration. "Michael and I were playing one of his video games back in the game room. I'm terrible at it, which means he wants to play it all the time when I'm over there watching him."

Horatio smiled.

"I had just lost for the seventh time and we were starting an eighth game when I heard the doorbell ring. The person was really impatient and just kept ringing it and ringing it. I tried to get Michael to pause the game, but he didn't want to. I gave up trying because the person at the door was going crazy with that doorbell—I thought they were going to break it."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"I left the game room and hurried out to the entryway. The frosted window obscured whoever it was. I could just make out the silhouette of a man. Jessie always had me keep the door locked when I babysat, so I had to undo the lock and the deadbolt before I could open the door. I figured maybe some guy's car had broken down and he was late for a meeting or something." Here she paused and looked down at the table.

"What happened then?" Horatio asked gently.

"It's sort of blurred together," she replied quietly, with a little bit of a tremor in her voice. "I..I tried to just open the door a crack, but the man shoved it open and the door hit me really hard in the head." She brushed gingerly at the dark purple welt on her forehead. "He grabbed me by the hair and held this rag over my face. It had this funny sweet smell to it. I think it was chloroform."

"So he was trying to knock you out…" Horatio mused.

"I guess so. I held my breath and tried to get free. I managed to dig into his side with my elbow. It must have hurt more than I thought, because he loosened his grip on me. I got mostly free and that's when I scratched his face. Before I could get out of there he hit me in the face. I think I fell…and then kicked him when he started coming after me again." She was struggling with details now, desperately trying to remember exactly what had happened.

He didn't say anything, giving her time.

She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated. "I…got up, somehow. I think I yelled at Michael to get out of there, but…I don't remember. Then…then out of nowhere, this guy had a knife. It looked huge." Her voice lowered again. "I had never been so scared in my life. I was cold all over. All I could think about was Michael." She shook her head. "I don't know why I ran at him and tried to grab the knife…it seems so stupid now…why didn't I…"

"Abbie, you were trying to protect Michael. You did what you could."

A tear leaked from corner of her eye. "We…we fought for a while. He stabbed me almost right away. Someone screamed…I think it was me. I thought for sure I was…dead, but I…I kept trying to get the knife away from him and he kept trying to cut me or stab me. He…he did get me several times. Somehow I knocked the knife out of his hands. And then out of nowhere came this dark shape. He hit me in the head with something...I think maybe it was some kind of wood. I fell, and everything started to get dark. My head felt like it was going to split open. Right before I blacked out was when the second guy came in. One of them kicked my leg—"

Horatio straightened up suddenly, realizing what she had just said. "Wait. Abbie, you said there was a second man?"

"Yes, he came in after I got hit in the head. When I woke up, both of the men were gone…and so was Michael. That's when I called 911 and you showed up."

"Ok…do you remember what they looked like?" He kept up an outward appearance of calm, but inside he was practically shouting. _There was a second man!_

"Only the first guy, the one that…attacked me. I never got a look at the second one because my vision started to go foggy after I got hit."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think you could describe the first man to one of our sketch artists?"

"I can't get his face out of my mind," she answered dejectedly.

"Abbie…I know that must be an awful image to have to see all the time, but it just might help us break the case."

She took a deep breath and replied, "Ok."

Horatio pushed his chair back and stood up, dialing Elisa Marston, one of the county's top sketch artists, on his phone as he did so. A quick conversation later, she was on her way to the lab. He turned back to Abbie, who was nervously twisting her hands in her lap. "We're not going to stop until we have these guys," he reassured her.

She met his eyes and nodded twice, still edgy.

He started to say something else, trying to put her at ease, but just then Calleigh rapped her knuckles on the room's glass door. She looked excited about something.

"I'll be back in a little while, all right?"

He slipped out of the interview room. "I can tell you have something big."

She grinned. "So do you. I recognize that look. You first."

He couldn't help but smile. "Abbie Bennett just informed me that our attacker had company. There was a second man in the house."

"Excellent."

"What do you have?"

"Well, I had this nagging feeling that we were missing something, so I went back to the crime scene this morning." She held up a small evidence bag.

Horatio peered at its contents. "Is that…hair?"

"Mmmhmm. I found it clinging to the bottom of the TV. Thank goodness for good ole' static electricity. A clump of pulled short brown hair, human as far as I can tell."

Her supervisor smiled. "Abbie's hair is lighter and longer. The boy and his mother are both blond."

"Exactly. I'm on my way to DNA right now. I'll page you with the results."

His phone started ringing as he waved Calleigh off. "Horatio," he answered. He listened to person on the other end for a minute before replying, "Ok. I'll be right there."

He arrived back at the reception area, where the officer at the front desk pointed towards the atrium. He nodded in acknowledgement.

"Ms. Dawson?"

A teary-eyed Jessica Dawson glanced up from the couch. "Lieutenant! Are you any closer to finding my little boy?"

"We've had several recent developments," he assured her.

She nodded to herself.

"The officer who told me that you were here said you had something for me."

"Oh, yeah." Jessie dug through her purse and came up with a piece of paper from a legal pad that had been folded in fours. "All my recent contacts, plus all the recent company contacts. As for enemies…" She shrugged. "There's no one I can think of."

Horatio glanced over the list. "No disgruntled coworkers…?"

"Oh no," she quickly assured him, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. "When you were at company headquarters, you saw all five co-owners. You see, Jaora Designs is a web and graphics design company that four of my college friends and I started up just last year. We named it Jaora after the first letter of each of our names: Jessie, Adrianne, Olivia, Rebecca, and Ariel. We're closer than sisters. None of them would ever want to hurt me or Michael."

"Ok…does Michael have any enemies? Any kids at school bother him?"

"No," she replied firmly. "That's just it. There's no one we know who would do anything like this. Everyone loves Michael—he's such a sweetheart and he has a great sense of humor. He has lots of friends…"

A sudden thought came to him. "What about Abbie? Do you know if she has any enemies?"

"I doubt it. Abbie's your all-American good girl. High honor roll, straight A's, after school volunteer work. She'll talk to everyone from the cheerleaders to the shyest kid in the school." She shook her head and looked at him guiltily. "I can't believe I thought she just sat around while Michael was kidnapped. I know her better than that…"

"When something happens to a loved one, you think all kinds of things," Horatio said gently.

While Calleigh waited for the DNA results on the hair she had collected, she joined Tim in the fingerprint analysis room. "How's it coming?" she asked

He sighed. "So far I've found about twenty smudges. I don't think we have any workable prints."

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Well, the guy did wear gloves."

"The babysitter just told Horatio there was a second man in the house. Maybe he wasn't as careful."

"Yeah, well, I'll let you know." He gestured at the stack of lifted prints on the table before him.

She smiled. "Want some help?"

"Please."

She pulled a chair up to the table and started sorting through the pile. She started pulling specific ones out. "Let's run these last. They're really small, which means they're probably Michael's." As she continued separating the tape lifts, she discovered a few fingerprints that would probably be usable once they ran them through cleanup. "Here." She passed them to Tim. "There might be something here."

He frowned and shook his head at them as he placed them in the scanner. "If we're lucky."

The image of a slightly distorted print appeared on the screen, and he played around with some of the cleanup features. After a minute or so he had a workable loop-type print. The computer identified several specific characteristics and started searching for a match.

"And now we—" The computer beeped almost immediately to indicate a match. "—don't wait," he finished in surprise.

"Whose print is it?"

He sighed. "Mom's. Horatio entered her prints and the babysitter's prints this morning to help us eliminate any prints that are supposed to be there. This one's from the door handle…something she uses everyday." He tapped a pen on the edge of the table.

Undeterred, she handed him another. "Try this one."

"Calleigh, this a partial smudge. If I can clean it up, we'll be lucky if we get enough points for comparison."

"Hey, I didn't print every surface in that house to have you leave one out!"

He placed it in the scanner. "I didn't say I was going to leave it out," he replied. "I was just pointing out the fact that—"

"I know, I know, I was just kidding! Now let's see what we can do with this."

The second print was more difficult to clean up. Tim played around with it for a good five minutes before they were left with a small partial print. The computer began identifying comparison points and highlighted them one by one with little green magnifying glass icons.

"We got lucky," he admitted as the computer fed the print through the national database.

They were sitting in suspenseful silence, waiting for a match, when Maxine Valera stuck her head in the door. "Calleigh, your DNA results are ready."

"Oh good." Calleigh jumped up. "I have to go," she added apologetically to Tim.

He waved her off. "Hope you have something more to work with than I do."

She followed Valera down the hall to the DNA lab. "Please tell me we finally have something."

The young lab tech nodded. "I didn't get anything when I ran the DNA through CODIS, so I decided to compare it to the DNA samples from the mom, the babysitter, and the little boy."

"And…?"

Valera wordlessly handed her two printouts. Calleigh looked them over slowly.

"Are you sure about this?"

She nodded solemnly. "I triple checked everything, just in case."

"Ok. I guess I need to go talk to Horatio. Thank you."

Calleigh dialed his number as she stepped back into the hall. He picked up on the second ring.

"Horatio."

"Hey, it's Calleigh. We finally have a lead. But…I need to talk to you in person."

She met him just outside the atrium.

"You sounded concerned," he said, placing his hand on his hip.

"DNA results from the hair I found," she replied, handing him the folder. "There were no hits in CODIS, so Valera ran it against the DNA samples from Jessie, Abbie, and Michael."

Horatio looked back and forth from one sheet to the other, frowning.

"She triple checked all of it."

"So now we have half a suspect. Ok…" He looked up from the folder and raised his eyebrows. "I think I need to have another discussion with Ms. Dawson."

Author's Note: I hope I managed to create some suspense in the last part there. It would be interesting to see your guesses on what they've found that has them so surprised and confused. Please review, if you can. You guys are awesome!!


	4. Chapter 4

Pawns and Knights

_Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot._

Author's Note: Yeah, keep the reviews coming! I love reading each and every one.

Hurray for Wednesdays! I remembered to put out the next chapter exactly a week after the last one. I'd say I'm doing pretty well for having so much to do at once. (Yeah, I didn't end up with as much free time as I thought.)

This chapter's the longest one and a LOT happens, just as a heads-up for you. I hope I managed to convey all the evidence and conflict properly.

Reviews are awesome!

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

**Pawns and Knights**

Horatio escorted a rather confused Jessie Dawson down the hall to one of the interview rooms.

"I'm going to get right to the point," he announced, turning to face her from across the table. "Who is Michael's father?"

She merely looked at him for moment. Then she said, "What does that have to with whoever took Michael?"

"It may have everything to do with who took your son, so I'm going to ask you again: who is Michael's father?"

Jessie looked away. "I don't know…I think maybe it was this one guy at college my senior year. There was this big party…I was drunk…there were lots of guys…"

He knew she was lying, but he played along. "Ok…did you tell him you were pregnant?"

"No. I wasn't totally sure it was him, and even if it was, I hardly knew the guy and he didn't seem like the type that would pay child support." She smiled wistfully.

"Jessie," he replied, quietly serious. "You're lying to me."

"My child is missing and you're accusing me about lying about his father?" she said angrily. "Who cares who his father is? He's _my_ son, I love him, and I want him back safely!"

"Here's why it matters, Jessie," he continued coolly. "We found a clump of hair at the crime scene that is a genetic match to Michael's father. What are the chances of a man who doesn't know he has a son being at the scene when that son is kidnapped?"

He had her. Her eyes darted around the room, avoiding him.

"He's not in the system, so would you care to enlighten us?"

She kept her head down, tears once more running down her cheeks.

"Ms. Dawson," Horatio said, his voice low and stern as he seated himself across the table from the young woman and rested his crossed arms on the tabletop. "This man is, at the very least, an accomplice to your son's disappearance. He's _not_ _worth_ _protecting_."

"It's not him I've been protecting!" Jessie sobbed. Her eyes were wide and fearful now. "I've been protecting Michael!"

Horatio waited.

She took in a shuddering breath and wiped at her eyes with a wad of tissue before she began to speak. "I…married right out of college. I was way too young, but I thought I was in love. Richard was such a sweet guy, always bringing me flowers…he was so smart, too! He graduated first in his class in high school and college and he could take a car apart and put it back together like you wouldn't believe. Right after we got married, he convinced me to invest in the stock market with him. I was terrified we were going to lose everything, although as newlyweds we didn't have much. We both came from lower middle class families."

"Does Richard have a last name?"

"Carter, Richard Carter. I switched back to my maiden name and legally changed Michael's last name after the divorce." She sighed. "Well, Richard invested in exactly the right companies and sold our stock at exactly the right time. Overnight we were fairly wealthy. We moved into a bigger house, bought new cars…just generally enjoyed our money a little but put most of it in the bank. That was about the same time I found out I was pregnant. We were both so excited…"

After a long pause, Horatio urged her on with, "But…?"

"But…Richard started acting weird once I was about three months along. He didn't want me leaving the house or talking to other people. I thought he was just being overprotective at first. After Michael was born, he was better about it…for a while, at least. He was so proud to have a son. We did all the normal family things together: Christmas pictures, vacations, stuff like that."

Her brown eyes were fixed on some point out in space. "Just shy of Michael's second birthday, though…Michael got really sick. He was in the hospital for three days with a high fever. They told us it was some kind of viral infection. He recovered completely, but once we got him home…it was Richard that worried me. He…he blamed me for Michael being sick. He said I was a terrible mother, and that I didn't take care of Michael. He…um, he…"

"Jessie," Horatio gently asked. "Did Richard hit you?"

She made eye contact for the first time and replied in little above a whisper, "Yeah."

"A lot?"

"Not…not at first. I thought he was just scared because Michael had been so sick. I mean, I couldn't really blame him. I was terrified that he wouldn't make it…But…uh, after a while it took a lot less to set him off and he just got more and more violent. I hid the bruises and I explained away the broken bones for probably about a year." Her face became tense. "But I refused to take it anymore when he started threatening Michael and shouting all these ways that he was going to kill me. I filed for a divorce when Michael was three and a half. It took almost the rest of the year before it was official. The judge ruled in my favor and I was granted full custody plus almost all of our joint assets. I only stayed in Indiana long enough to make him think we were living in an apartment on the other side of the city. I left with Michael in the middle of night on a bus with just some clothes and all the money I'd been granted."

"Ok…why did you sneak away in the middle of the night? You were free of your husband."

"He scared me, lieutenant. He had gone from this caring, gentle guy to a total psychopath. I was afraid for my life and Michael's. I decided it was best for us to just disappear. I don't know exactly how I picked Miami, but I got lucky: several of my old college friends lived here. I had lost contact with them over the years, so they didn't know about my marriage. They were very supportive and they never asked about Michael's father. We started up Jaora Designs just a month or two after I got here. They were a little curious where I got the money to start a business, but they didn't force the issue, especially after the business took off and we were all well-off."

She shook her head anxiously. "After that, I just tried to forget about my old life, and so did Michael. I haven't thought about Richard in a long time." She started to choke up again.

Horatio looked both sympathetic and frustrated at the same time. "Jessie, why didn't you tell us this when Michael was first missing?"

Tears running down her face, she replied, "I thought we were safe here."

"Eric," Horatio called to his colleague down the hall.

"H," Eric replied as he joined his boss outside the atrium. "We have the sketch from the babysitter's attacker circulating, along with the sketch of the husband. No hits yet."

"Ok. What about the vehicle? Has it been spotted?"

He shook his head. "No luck so far."

Horatio nodded slowly in understanding. He glanced over at Abbie Bennett who was waiting just outside the atrium entryway. She had been trying to call her house to get someone to pick her up, but the line had been busy. He had offered to drive her home, but she insisted she didn't want to inconvenience him and kept trying to call home.

Jessie Dawson was suddenly there, on her way out of the lab after she had finished describing her ex-husband to one of the sketch artists. She almost walked past Abbie, but she caught sight of her at the last second.

Abbie must have realized someone was looking at her, because she looked up from her cell phone. Her face drained of color. "J-Jessie," she stuttered. Her eyes watered as she tried to explain. "I'm so sorry, I tried to stop him, really I did, but-but I couldn't, and…and I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" she implored.

Jessie hurried towards the young girl. "Oh, Abbie," she said softly. "I know you tried to stop him. There's nothing to be sorry about." As best she could without hurting her, she gave her babysitter a gentle hug. "Do you have a ride home?"

"Not yet. I keep trying to call my parents—"

"Don't worry about it. I'll take you home. Come on." She put an arm around her shoulders and they started to head out.

"One second ladies," Horatio called after them. They stopped and turned as he walked over and handed each of them a business-type card. "This is my cell phone number. If you think of anything else that might help, or if you need anything, give me a call, day or night. Ok?"

They nodded and thanked him. Abbie gave him a small smile as she left with Jessie.

Horatio and his team gathered together for a quick working lunch in the break room. Containers of fast food and folders of information and photographs were scattered across the table. They were going over every last fact, measurement, and piece of trace, hoping that they had missed something, _anything_.

Calleigh had abandoned the chopsticks that came with her Chinese food in favor of a spoon to save time. She was repeatedly shuffling through all the crime scene photos. Horatio sat on her right, finishing off his burger as he reviewed the statements from the neighbor, Ms. Dawson, and Abbie. Eric was on Calleigh's left, growing increasingly frustrated with the contents of a folder. He finally threw it down on the table. It skittered across the surface, nearly knocking over Tim's drink.

"Hey man, be careful!"

"Sorry Speed." He was still highly agitated. "It's just…how can we have _nothing_?! How can this boy still be missing?!"

"We have something. That's why we're here," Horatio reminded him. "We're going to keep going over this until we find it." He turned to Calleigh. "What about the soil samples from the welcome mat?"

Through a mouthful of stir-fry, she replied, "So far all we have is sand and dirt from the Dawson property, but I still have a couple of techs working on it. It's slow going."

"We're going to need that. It could tell us where the kidnappers have been, which could quite probably be the location where they're hiding Michael."

"Do you really think they're still here, H?" Tim asked. "Why would they hang around once they have the kid?"

Horatio shook his head. "I don't think this is about Michael. Jessie Dawson told me that her ex-husband was violent towards her, but not their son. He blamed her for anything that happened to the boy. I think he's here for revenge against Jessie. If that's true, I'm willing to bet he's still in the area. He wants her to suffer…and he wants to be around to see it."

They all returned to their work, frantically searching for that elusive bit of evidence that would give them something to work with. No one needed to be reminded how long it had been since Michael had been taken.

Suddenly, the sound of Horatio's cell phone ringing broke through the near-silence. He quickly swallowed the last of his french fries and snatched up the phone. "Horatio," he answered hastily.

"Hey Horatio, it's Frank."

"Frank. Tell me you have good news."

"You bet. Just got a call from a guy at a gas station downtown. He recognized the girl's attacker from the sketches we released. The employee at the counter is stalling him."

"Good. Bring him in and impound his vehicle."

"On my way there now. Guess what the guy's driving."

Horatio smiled in satisfaction. "An old blue Suburban."

"Yep. License plate ends in 2IA."

"Ok…let's see what he has to say."

His team was looking at him expectantly as he hung up his cell phone. He didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then, with a smile, he said simply, "We got one."

* * *

The man now sitting in the interrogation room was tall and strong, with close-cropped blond hair. He wore dark, well-worn jeans and a grey, collared short-sleeve shirt. There were several small pink scratches running down one of his cheeks. Drumming his fingers on the tabletop and swiveling his chair back and forth, he tried to look unconcerned. He probably wasn't much older than twenty-six or twenty-seven.

Horatio watched from the hallway, the glass walls making the man almost appear to be under a giant microscope. He tapped a folder against his palm thoughtfully. After about a minute, he pushed open the door and joined their suspect in the interrogation room.

The suspect watched as he took a seat opposite from him. The lieutenant very carefully placed his sunglasses on his left. On his right, he placed the folder, still closed.

"So…Mr. Ramsey…"

"Call me Mark," the man offered, as if he were being generous. He gave off an aura of arrogance that irritated Horatio.

"Mark." Horatio stated resentfully.

"Hey, you wanna tell me what I'm doing here?"

"Actually, _Mark_, I think you know exactly why you're here."

He shrugged. "Can't think of anything."

Horatio raised his eyebrows and gave him a disbelieving snort. He subtly opened the folder and withdrew a single five by seven photograph. He held it up for Mark to see. It was Abbie's ninth grade picture, taken only a few months earlier. She was beaming widely at the photographer, her long brown hair pulled neatly away from her face and her blue eyes sparkling happily.

"Do you recognize this young lady?"

Mark shifted closer and pretended to really study the photo. He finally shook his head and leaned back. "Nope, sorry."

"Pretty girl," Horatio added coaxingly.

He shrugged, with a half-smirk on his face.

"Ok…" Horatio returned to the folder and this time retrieved a stack of eight by ten pictures. He spread them out methodically on the surface of the table. "Here's the problem: I know you recognize her, because you're the one who caused all these injuries."

He looked over them slowly. They were all raw close-ups of Abbie's many wounds. The bruises on her forehead and near her eye, the many lacerations on her arms, hands, and neck, and the stab wound to her shoulder were all documented in full color. The glossy prints seemed to throw him off for a minute and he bit his lower lip pensively.

He recovered from his surprise and tried to shrug it off. "That's terrible what happened to her. But you've got the wrong guy."

"No, Mark," Horatio replied in a quiet, dangerous tone. "I have exactly the right guy. One of my CSIs took a DNA sample from you when you first arrived here."

"Yeah, that hot blond chick."

He pretended not to hear his response and continued, "Your DNA places you at the crime scene."

Mark started to protest, but Horatio interrupted him. "How'd you get those scratches on your face?"

Involuntarily, his hand went to his cheek. "Cat," he offered lamely.

"Nope," the lieutenant replied with conviction. "Those…" he paused for emphasis. "Are from when Abbie scratched you. The skin we recovered from under her fingernails is a perfect…genetic… match." He tapped one finger on the tabletop with each word.

Mark was essentially frozen. His mouth hung open a little and he just stared at the pictures, unsure of what to do or say.

"But…" Horatio continued, sorting through the folder and extracting another photograph. "This…this is who you were really after." He held up a picture of Michael sitting on a swing at the park, grinning from ear to ear. His blond hair was tousled from playing and his big brown eyes were excited. "Michael Dawson. And don't tell me you don't recognize him. So…who hired you, Mark?" He was fairly certain he knew the answer, but he pressed for a confession that would tell them definitely and then hold up in court.

"Nobody," he replied sullenly.

"You expect me to believe that you forced your way into a random house, viciously attacked the girl who answered the door, and took the boy for no reason?"

"I never said I took that kid."

"A neighbor saw your vehicle making a getaway right before the 911 call came in that reported him missing." He paused. "We also know you had at least an accomplice because we found a clump of hair at the scene. So, once more: who hired you?"

Silence.

"Mark, I want a name."

Silence.

"Ok…Mr. Ramsey, do you know that we have enough to charge you with attempted murder, in addition to the assault of a minor? I can assure you that charges like that don't result in a slap on the wrist."

He had the man's attention now.

"If you help us, you can help yourself."

Very reluctantly, he replied with a shake of his head. "That girl wasn't supposed to be there. He'd been watching the house for days. He just wanted me to take the knife and the chloroform to scare the boy. But when she answered the door instead, I figured I'd better knock her out. It shouldn't have been a problem."

"But then she fought back," Horatio observed quietly.

"Yeah, you can say that again! She went crazy! You gotta believe me—I didn't mean to hurt her that bad! I just…panicked." He sighed. "His name's Richard Carter. Can we work out some kind of a deal?"

"Keep talking and we'll see. How did a clump of Richard's hair end up in the game room?"

"We got in a fight. I thought I'd killed that girl, but he wasn't concerned. We went in the house and grabbed the little boy. He fought back, too, and Richard punched him in the face. Kid's nose started bleeding and he just laid there on the carpet, crying." Mark leaned in. "He'd said that he'd give me ten thousand to do the job. I hadn't counted on him tagging along to watch…or help." He looked down at the table. "I told him I was willing to take the kid, but I didn't want bodies on my hands. Then I asked him why he'd hired me to do it if he was going to do it. He got really mad and started yelling something about how no one in Florida could see him, that he couldn't ever be a suspect or it would ruin everything. Ruin what exactly, I dunno. He wasn't making much sense. Then he wanted me to go finish off the girl so there'd be no chance of a witness. I refused and we got into a huge fight. That must be when I pulled out his hair. When it was over, he didn't even remember that the girl was there. Walked right past her, too, when he dragged the boy out to my vehicle. Something's seriously wrong with that guy's head."

"Ok…where are they now?"

"That I don't know. He had me drop them off just a couple blocks away from the house."

"If you're lying…"

"I'm not, I swear!"

"We'll see about that." Horatio gathered up all the pictures and replaced them in the folder. As he stood up, he picked up his sunglasses and warned him, "Sit tight. You're still going to need a lawyer."

* * *

Horatio was halfway to the lab where the soil samples were being processed when his phone rang. One-handed, he flipped it open and answered it. "Horatio."

"Umm, Lieutenant Caine?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Abbie, Abbie Bennett." She sounded worried.

"Abbie, what's going on? Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I…I think so. Uh, you guys didn't find a ransom note, right?"

"That's right, we didn't. Why?"

She swallowed. "I think I just did."

* * *

Abbie met him out in front of the building. She had a large carrying case slung over one shoulder and kept biting her lip nervously, staring at the sidewalk.

"Abbie?"

She looked up. "Lieutenant!"

"What do you have?"

She pulled the case from her shoulder and held it out to him. "That's Jessie's old laptop. She's letting me borrow it while our home computer is broken. I hadn't checked my e-mail in a few days, so I logged on about an hour after I left here. I had forgotten that Jessie's account is the default, so it started downloading all her e-mails before I realized what was going on. Most of them looked pretty routine, business contacts and stuff, but the one…I knew better than to read someone else's mail, but the subject line worried me."

"What is it?"

"It says 'I have him' in all capital letters. I opened it, and…and it was the kidnapper, demanding money. As soon as I read that far, I called you and caught a bus here."

"Ok. This could be a big help. Thank you, Abbie."

"No problem. I just hope it means Michael will be back soon."

He nodded solemnly.

"Well, I'd better catch the bus back home. Will you let me know if it leads to anything?"

"I'll do that."

She waved goodbye as she headed off to the bus stop. He didn't stay to watch her leave, but rather hurried into the lab with their newest piece of evidence.

Within minutes, Tyler Jenson, one of the lab's top AV techs, had the laptop hooked up and the e-mail in question was on the screen.

'I HAVE HIM' announced the subject line. The rest of the e-mail was equally as menacing.

'_You thought you could hide, didn't you? You can't hide from me. I took Michael so he'll be safe, away from you. I might consider a trade, though……one for another. Directions will follow. I hope you're not going to try anything stupid. Bring 100,000 with you. Don't tell the cops anything or I might have to get rid of Michael. You don't want that, do you?'_

Standing next to Horatio, Calleigh exhaled slowly. "He says their son is safe, then he threatens to kill him. We're dealing with a real psycho."

Horatio nodded. Contemplatively, he read through the e-mail another three or four times. "Ok…we don't have time to wait for another message. Tyler, can you trace the IP address that was used to send this?"

"Sure can." His fingers raced across the keyboard, tapping out a sequence of commands that pulled up menu after menu. It was a dizzying display that ended as quickly as it had begun. "All right, here we go." A series of numbers flashed on the screen.

"Run that through the database, see if you can come up with an address."

"Ok." He switched over to a lab computer and plugged in the numbers. It took a while longer, but eventually the screen flashed its results. "Sorry, no definitive address. He could be using a laptop with wireless."

"Ok…we have to find a way to track him down. We are running out of time."

The three of them sat in apprehensive silence. _There has to be some way. Where and why would he be using a laptop?_

Inspiration suddenly struck and he turned to Calleigh. "Did you get the results from that soil?"

"Yeah I did, finally." She pulled a sheet of paper from a folder by her side and handed it to him. It listed all the components in the soil.

He frowned thoughtfully. "The only place you see this type is in certain areas near the Glades. Tyler, pull up a map of the county and highlight the areas with this soil type."

He did so and they saw that while it was relatively small compared to Dade County, it was still a lot of ground to cover."

"Ok…now cross-reference it with any wireless internet sources."

The highlighted area on the map shrunk to a tiny corner.

"That's where we're going to start," he announced, satisfied that they finally had something concrete to work with. Just then, his cell phone went off. He had it to his ear in a fraction of a second. "Horatio."

Calleigh watched her boss frown as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

"Ok, I'll see what I can do," he finally replied. "Thank you." He looked rather upset.

"What now?" she asked.

"Abbie Bennett is missing."

"What?!"

"Her parents haven't seen her since she left to drop the laptop off. I saw her leave here for the bus back home…" He stopped and frowned. "But I never actually saw her get on the bus because I was preoccupied with the laptop…"

"Do you think the ex-husband found her?"

He didn't hear her. His mind was trying to recall some elusive connection, some scrap of information that he knew he had that would tell him where Abbie was. Images rushed through his head: Abbie fighting like crazy to protect Michael, struggling to walk when she went looking for him after the attack, refusing medical treatment and making light of her injuries as she begged him to find the little boy…

And there was a phrase from the ransom note that kept echoing in his mind. _I might consider a trade…I might consider a trade…_

"Tyler, pull up the list of deleted messages," he ordered suddenly.

"Um, ok…" A few keystrokes brought up an impressive list, but the group only had eyes for the most recent one. It had the same address as the ransom note.

'I BET YOU WANT TO TRADE' read the title. When Tyler opened it, they found that the message was blank but had an attachment. He double clicked the icon and they found themselves staring at the scanned image of a map with directions scribbled on it.

"If this was deleted…" the AV tech began to say.

"It means Abbie read it." Horatio finished.

"Why would she delete the e-mail that helps us find the kidnapper?" Calleigh frowned.

"Because she still feels responsible. She's going to try to deal with this herself."

"How's she going to do that?" she asked. "Somehow I don't see her having one hundred thousand dollars at her disposal."

"Print out a copy of that map," Horatio ordered. As soon as the printer spat out the paper, he grabbed it and his keys from the desktop and headed for the door. "It's not money she's going to trade," he called over his shoulder to Calleigh. "She's going to trade herself."

* * *

Author's Note: I tried to end that part like they would do in an episode—you know, going to commercial just when there's finally a break in the case. How did I do?? I hope you're as intrigued as I am. I mean, even though I wrote the darn thing, I get the end and go, 'AH! What happens next? Wait, I know what happens!' XD Reviews are always lovely to see. You all are awesome!


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot._

Author's Note: Thirty-seven reviews, all right! I had hoped for more than five reviews on chapter four, but hey, I'll take what I can get. :) I love reading each and every one.

Happy Wednesday—new chapter day!! I'll have to get to work on chapter six as soon as I can, maybe tonight after I get home from my graduation. :) I promise to do my best to get the next chapter out on time, but with graduation and graduation parties/open houses and work and everything else I don't know. I'm also trying to update my _Voyager_ stories and my _CSI _story, plus I'm working on a new _CSI: Miami _story—yay!! So…yeah. We'll see how everything goes. :)

I hope you find most everything resolved in this chapter. If I missed anything, please PM me so I can fix it!! Enjoy the almost-ending!

Reviews are awesome!

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

**Pawns and Knights**

Horatio climbed into one of the department Hummers and sped away from the lab, headed for the edge of the Glades. Occasionally he glanced at the map on the seat next to him. The directions scribbled on it led him off the causeway to a series of back roads, which was lucky because he was completely ignoring the speed limit but didn't dare put the lights and siren on. The last thing he needed to do was give Richard an advance warning.

The paved back roads became dirt and he slowed as the map indicated he was nearly there. Both sides of road were overgrown with weeds and generally looked abandoned. A small, little-used driveway parted the weeds on the side of the road to his left. He slid off his sunglasses and tucked them around his neck for safekeeping. As quietly as he could, he carefully parked the Hummer and shut it off. He stepped out of the vehicle and gently shut the door. The tiny click it made seemed loud in comparison to the soft breeze rustling through the trees and the occasional chirping of the birds. He slid his gun out of its holster and headed into the driveway.

The dusty surface held footprints well. He saw what appeared to be a man's sneaker impression, along with some very small footprints that turned into drag marks in some places. A set of girl's sandals had made impressions over top both of the other sets of footprints.

A sudden noise up ahead alerted him to a presence and he raised his weapon, hands locked securely. He rounded the curve as quickly as he dared.

Abbie was walking ahead of him, shoulders set determinedly as she made her way down the driveway.

"Abbie," he called quietly.

She jumped and whipped around to face him, raising her hands involuntarily when she saw he had his gun aimed in her direction.

He lowered it but kept it at the ready. "Don't move," he added. Slowly, he made his way to where she stood, plainly frightened. Her hands fell to her sides.

When he was within arm's length, he continued in barely a whisper, "What are you doing here?"

She made no attempt to stop the tears. "It's my fault he has Michael. Michael's like my little brother. I refuse to let him hurt him anymore. I'm going to take his place."

"Abbie, this man is dangerous."

"I know. That's why I'm going to trade myself for Michael. He'll still get his ransom."

"You lied to me Abbie. You read both e-mails. Why didn't you tell us?"

"I knew it would take a while before the police could do anything. Every minute that went by could mean that..." She looked at the ground. "I'm sorry. I know it was reckless, but I have to do this."

"No," he replied firmly. "You are not going to hand yourself over to him."

"But Michael—" She gestured helplessly, her face wet with tears.

"Abbie, you are going to let me handle this." He forced her to look him in the eye. "Here's what I want you to do. Go back down this driveway. My Hummer is parked there. I want you to get in the car and lock the doors. You are going to stay there until I tell you otherwise. No matter what you hear, stay in the car until I get back or backup arrives. Do you understand?"

She looked past him, down the driveway, a deep emotional pain etched on her features.

"Abbie."

She looked back at him.

"Go."

After another second or two of hesitation, she turned and hurried back down the driveway. He waited until he heard the click of the door before he continued down the driveway, his gun drawn.

The driveway ended at a small, abandoned cabin that had been used in years past as a ranger station. It bore the signs of the hurricane damage that had led to its abandonment. The front door was slightly ajar. Slowly and carefully, he sidled up to it. He listened for several seconds, and, when he didn't hear anything, he slid inside.

It was fairly dark inside, but his eyes adjusted quickly and he was able to make out the shapes of a man standing at the other end of the room near the crumpled form of a little boy.

"Richard Carter?"

The man spun around. He was holding a gun and he aimed it directly at Horatio. "Who are you? What do you want? Where's Jessica?"

"I'm Lieutenant Horatio Caine and I want you to let Michael go."

Richard snorted. "I don't think so. He's my only guarantee that she'll show up with the money." He observed the other man for a second, taking in the fact that he was also armed. "Lieutenant, huh?" He cursed softly. "I told her not to get the cops involved."

"Actually, she isn't the one who got us involved." Horatio's mind calculated how long it would be before backup arrived and decided it was best to keep him talking. "Michael's babysitter Abbie is the one who called us."

"She lived?!" he snarled. He spat out a few more curse words.

"Yes, she did. So, you see, Michael's mother hasn't done anything."

"Doesn't matter. The cops are involved." He turned to aim his gun at Michael.

"Richard," Horatio warned, his voice low and icy. "Don't do it."

"I don't think you're one to be giving orders, _lieutenant_," he shouted, stressing his rank sarcastically. "I have my finger on the trigger and unless you put your gun down, it's over for the boy!"

For the first time, Horatio was able to see the little boy clearly. His hands and feet were bound and his face was bruised and crusted with blood. Michael twisted against his bonds and whimpered through the duct tape over his mouth.

Horatio held his gun steady. "Richard, this is your son we're talking about."

"He's not my son! That _woman_," he spat, referring to Jessie. "Has corrupted him! I want nothing to do with him! All I want is compensation for what I could have had!"

"Richard, the money isn't going to change anything. Let Michael go."

"I SAID PUT YOUR GUN DOWN!!" He moved his own gun towards his son menacingly.

"Ok..." Horatio said slowly. He lowered his gun.

"Good. Now…put it on the floor!"

Horatio held up one hand to show he was cooperating, then moved forward and leaned down to place the gun on the floor. At the same time, Richard moved forward to take possession of it.

His timing was perfect. Just as Richard went to grab the gun from the floor, Horatio, still half-crouched on the ground, brought his fist up and hit the other man squarely on the jaw. He flew backwards and his gun went off. Before he had a chance to recover, Horatio pinned him down and tore the gun from his hands and threw it to the other side of the room. His own gun was back in his hand and he held it against Richard's head.

"Don't move," he said in a low growl. "Or it's over _for you_."

For about a minute they stayed like that, neither one moving, no noise except their own breathing and Michael's whimpering. Suddenly, the sound of sirens broke through the near-silence and several seconds later Tripp burst through the door, followed by three other officers, all with guns drawn.

"You ok, Horatio?"

"Yeah, fine." He stood up and holstered his weapon. "Frank, get rid of him."

"With pleasure. Richard Carter," he announced as he fastened a pair of handcuff securely around the man's wrists. "You're under arrest for the kidnapping of Michael Dawson. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…"

Horatio moved quickly to Michael's side and helped the small boy sit up. Gently, he peeled the duct tape from the boy's mouth. "Are you ok, Michael?"

"Uh huh," he sniffled.

He used his pocketknife to cut the rope that bound his wrists and ankles and then helped Michael to his feet. He took a few unsteady steps towards the door, holding fast to Horatio's hand. Even when he regained his balance he didn't let go.

"Where's my mommy? Where's Abbie? Are they ok?" Michael asked as they left the darkness of the cabin for the bright Miami sunshine outside.

"They're both fine and they're waiting to see you," he reassured him.

He clutched his hand tighter. "Are they going to send that man to jail?"

"Yes they are, and Michael…" He stopped for a minute and looked the boy in the eyes. "He's never going to hurt you again, ok?"

The boy nodded and they continued down the driveway. "Was that man really my daddy?"

Horatio paused for a moment, thinking. "You know what Michael? I'll let your mom tell you about that."

When they reached the end of the driveway, they could see a large group of patrol cars and an ambulance. Several police officers were milling around. The Hummer was closest to them, and they could see Abbie sitting in the passenger seat, looking worried. No doubt she had heard the gunshot.

Suddenly, she noticed the two of them coming down the driveway. Her eyes grew wide and she fumbled with the lock. The door flew open and she shot out, moving as fast as she possibly could.

"Michael!" she yelled.

The small boy let go of Horatio's hand and hurried towards his babysitter. "Abbie!"

When they met, she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms protectively around the small boy, ignoring her wounds. "Oh, Michael," she murmured into his hair. "I'm so sorry. Are you ok?"

"Sorry about what?" Michael was genuinely confused. "I'm ok. What about you? You have big bruises on your face and lots of scratches." He pushed away from her a little and his face darkened. "Did that man hurt you too?"

She pulled him closer for another a hug. "Just a little," she fibbed. "But I'm fine now."

"When can I see mommy?"

Horatio knelt beside the two of them. "Well, Michael, the paramedics want to take a look at you first, just to be sure you're all right. Then we'll go back to the station and meet your mom. Ok?"

Michael looked hesitantly at the ambulance.

"It's no big deal," Abbie reassured him as she stood up and took his hand. "They had to take a look at me when I got hurt."

With a nod and a smile, he grabbed her hand, completely trusting, and followed her as she led him over to the waiting paramedics.

Horatio watched them go, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

* * *

Five days later, Horatio once more pulled his Hummer into the driveway of the Dawson home. This time, however, there was no sense of urgency, no swarm of police over the lawn, and no crime scene tape. He took his time getting out of the vehicle and making his way to the door. He could see Abbie and Michael playing in the surf at the edge of the beachfront part of the property. He smiled to himself and raised a hand to ring the doorbell, but stopped himself and knocked on the door instead.

Jessie Dawson answered the door. "Lieutenant! What brings you out here?" She looked younger, happier, and lighter, in a way, as if all the stress and anxiety she had been carrying with her had weighted her down.

"Jessie, how have things been?"

"A little difficult. Michael's having some trouble sleeping, and he and Abbie still won't go in the game room or spend a single second longer than necessary in the entryway here, but nothing too major. I've taken some time off from work and it seems to be helping."

"That's good to hear." He took off his sunglasses and held them loosely in his left hand. "The reason I stopped by was to check up on everyone and give you some good news: the district attorney has declared Richard fit to stand trial and rejected his plea of insanity."

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's fantastic!"

Shrieks of glee from the water's edge caught their attention and they turned to see the two children splashing each other.

"They're like siblings, you know," Jessie said. "I've always been so grateful to her, watching Michael after school and weekends when she could have been out with her friends so that I could get the business off the ground. Still, it's hard to believe what she was going to do, trade herself like that…"

Horatio nodded thoughtfully, and they stood quietly for a minute, watching the two of them. "I think I'll go share the news with Abbie as well," he finally said.

"She'll be glad to hear it. Thanks for stopping by."

Horatio made his way down the beach to where Michael and Abbie were playing in the waves. Too focused on their water fight, they only noticed him when a particularly big splash from Michael soaked not only Abbie, but also the lieutenant who was standing a few feet behind her.

The sight of Michael's mouth frozen slightly open and his eyes focused behind her made Abbie turn around. "Lieutenant Caine! Michael, what did you do?"

"It was a really big splash," he offered meekly. "Sorry Mr. Lieutenant! It was an accident."

Horatio chuckled. "That's ok."

"Hey Michael," Abbie broke in. "What don't you go shore up the defenses on our sand castle? I think the waves might have weakened them."

"Ok!" He saluted the two of them and scurried a little way down the beach, out of earshot.

"Sorry about that."

"It happens," Horatio replied with a smile. They watched Michael for a bit. "How're you holding up?"

She shook her head. "My parents have been really great about everything, but…I thought I was too old for nightmares. I've gotten maybe nine hours of sleep, total, since the attack."

"That's understandable."

"I suppose." The bathing suit she was wearing made the stab wound on her shoulder painfully visible, a dark red ragged canyon held together with four stitches.

"I thought I'd let you know that the district attorney has declared Richard fit to stand trial. He also rejected his plea of insanity."

"That's good." She absentmindedly watched Michael gather mounds of sand to add to the sand castle's walls.

"You ok?"

"Yeah. It's just…" She hesitated. "Michael's own father only cared about getting the money. His son was nothing to him…just a….pawn in his elaborate scheme."

"That may be true," Horatio responded. "But you were a knight, fighting to keep him safe, and then fighting to find him."

Abbie smiled at the chess reference. "Thank you, lieutenant."

Horatio returned the smile and the two of them stood there at the water's edge, watching the waves lap the shore.

Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter!! Let's see lots of reviews!! (Please?) :)


	6. Chapter 6

Pawns and Knights

_Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to CBS. I own the characters that I made up and the new plot._

Author's Note: Ok, so it almost took two weeks to get this chapter out, but hey—that's pretty good considering that I've had baccalaureate, graduation, a wedding, a family reunion, job hunting, babysitting, and chores! In addition, this chapter was probably the hardest one to write. This is probably the first time I've really written anything romantic. I seriously hope I didn't make this chapter too hard to believe or too sappy/mushy. Please let me know if it is in a private message so that I can fix it ASAP.

I did my best to imagine Calleigh and Horatio saying the dialogue that I've written for them and I _think_ it works. At the very least, I found it sweet and imaginable and it makes me happy, so let's see what all my awesome readers think!

Cyber hugs for everyone!! Thanks for all the (46!) reviews and for sticking with me, guys!!

I don't live for reviews, but close to it! XD Just kidding, but they are always great. :)

_This story takes place at the end of season one._

**Pawns and Knights**

In the evidence locker back at the CSI building, Horatio Caine sorted through the boxes of evidence from the Dawson case, ensuring that every piece of critical evidence was correctly catalogued and trial-ready. When he was satisfied, he replaced the lids of the boxes and secured them with red evidence tape. With great contentment, he stamped 'solved' on the description panel of each box and moved the three of them to the shelf reserved for cases set to go to trial. He took one last look around before he flicked off the lights and locked the door behind him.

"Hey Calleigh!" Eric called from just outside the small room where the employees had their lockers. "Me and Speed and Tripp are going to grab a bite to eat. Wanna come?"

Calleigh slung her small white purse over her shoulder and shut her locker door. "Can I take a rain check?"

"Plans?"

"Not really." She flashed her colleague a smile. "I'm just kinda busy. Sorry."

"Hey, I understand." Eric smiled back. "Catcha later!"

"You bet!"

Horatio sat in his office, the overhead lights off and only his small desk lamp providing some illumination. His thoughts kept wandering back to the Dawson case. When he'd stopped by the house the day before, he had intended to ask Abbie if she wanted to testify at the trial. It was the district attorney's suggestion—the evidence was completely solid, but juries often responded even better to witnesses than photographs. When Abbie had admitted to him that she was still a little shaken, he had decided to not even bring it up.

But he knew what her answer would be once he did ask her.

Watching her stand over Michael protectively while he dug a new moat for their sand castle, Horatio had to admit that he'd felt somewhat…well, _jealous_. Here was this fourteen-year-old girl who had been ready to sacrifice herself for a little boy she wasn't even related to. In comparison, he kept his CSIs safe and covered for them whenever necessary. He was protective of each one of them and would kill for them if need be. He liked being the team's leader. He liked his role as the tough one. But every once in a while, a small voice in the back of his head would ask:

_Who watches out for me? _

He knew that any member of his team would respond without hesitation if he was in trouble, but it just somehow wasn't quite the same…He was still deep in thought when a small knock on the doorframe of his office nearly made him jump out of his skin. He looked up to see Calleigh standing there, looking apologetic.

"Sorry," she said. "Is this a bad time?"

"Ah, no…no, it's fine." He smiled up at her.

She entered the room and took a seat in front of his desk. For a minute, the two of them simply sat there.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Calleigh finally asked.

"What makes you think something's wrong?"

"Horatio, you're a million miles away and you don't exactly look happy. Something's up."

He gave a small sigh. "It's…nothing important."

"It's the Dawson case, isn't it?"

He smiled mirthlessly to himself.

A few more seconds of silence followed before Calleigh broke it.

"Horatio, why do you do this?" Her voice was soft and concerned, not accusatory.

He fiddled with his sunglasses behind the desk, not making eye contact. "Do what?"

"This. This…retreating inside yourself and pretending nothing's bothering you." She paused for emphasis before she added, "I'm not blind, Horatio."

_I'm a grown man for crying out loud…I don't want to look weak…_

"Horatio?"

He sighed and looked her in eye. "The truth?"

"Yes."

_Can I do this? Can I finally admit I'm not as tough as I look?_

Something in her eyes told him he could.

"I'm uh,…I'm jealous of a seven-year-old boy."

"Michael Dawson."

"Yeah."

Her unspoken 'why' hung in the air for a short while before he came up with the answer.

"Who protects the protector?"

He was expecting her to make light of it, or to try to talk him out of that line of thinking, or to bring up the team as a whole, or maybe bring up Tripp, but how she actually responded was a complete surprise.

Calleigh's hand glided over the surface of his desk and came to rest on top of his own hand.

Horatio looked up, somewhat startled. Her eyes were filled with a caring loyalty and something else…something more than just friendship.

"I will," she said in little more than a whisper.

He could barely find the voice to reply, "Thank you." It felt rather inadequate given what had just transpired between the two of them.

Calleigh merely smiled and gently rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand. Horatio smiled back and let her fingers intertwine with his as they sat in his dimly lit office, not saying anything more but enjoying one another's company and mutual support.

In that one moment, things changed.

Soooooo…-bounces nervously- What did you think? It's one of my favorite pieces and the first piece of DuCaine that I've actually typed up, so I'm eager to see what all you wonderful people think. Let me know! :)


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